


Broken Things

by mallml



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Character Study, Dystopia, Gen, Growth, Kakashi-centric, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Crush, aus abound, dark characters, mental unhealth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24280777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mallml/pseuds/mallml
Summary: Some of my headcanons, drabbles, and plot bunnies that don't work too well in comic form; most of them are somewhat dark.Chapter 15:Kakashi is depressed, and his sensei determines to step in.dark!Minato
Comments: 23
Kudos: 48





	1. The Boy in the Rock

This is how the future began...

First of all: the brightest of his generation, the last of his clan, Hatake Kakashi died ignominiously in a cave-in.

Then the Uchiha black sheep, reckless with anger, overconfident in his new Sharingan, was cut down in a failed attempt to destroy the bridge. (They _took_ his eyes.)

Minato limped back to Konoha under a cloud, with only a girl of a medic-nin left of his team.

The war was costly. So very costly.

Orochimaru-san (no one even whispered the name Namikaze) was made the Fourth, Danzo his trusted advisor.

Konoha lived under the rule of twin serpents.

Then one day, fifty years later, a patrol stops to rest in a ruined cave. They stumble across a most curious thing: a boy, encased in moss-grown stone, his hands frozen in the final sign of a jutsu.

His headband bears the symbol of Old Konoha.


	2. Thoughts Before a Massacre

As Itachi made his careful preparations for the coming ordeal, he felt all the proper emotions, he was sure: dread, horror, ~~anticipation~~ , self-loathing, fear, _~~excitement~~_... but underneath it all, there was the slightest shiver of hope.

Hope for when his ANBU captain learned the name of who had committed such an atrocity.

Hatake Kakashi would finally show a genuine _feeling_ —he would have to, he would **_have_** to—and it would be Itachi who'd _made_ him.

It was only too bad he couldn't be there to watch such a ~~beautiful~~ man break down. 


	3. Ronin

Please imagine...

this arrogant asshole of a samurai, kicked out for dishonoring his clan; he’s ordering his pretty young wife to come and live life on the run with him but she refuses; she grew up a pampered princess and besides there’s their newborn son to think about so, being the unyielding ill-tempered bastard that he is, he snatches up the baby and leaves 

her heartbroken (more on her later) 

and he doesn’t fare well and they almost die in the wilderness until the baby’s cries wake him up and they’ve somehow made it to civilization! because the first thing he sees is a scarecrow so that’s what he names his kid

—“scarecrow” but to the disgraced ronin it means a second chance—

and he slowly learns to become a better and kinder and more patient person as he struggles to take care of an infant’s needs while surviving the wrath of everyone he cheesed off back in the day (a long, _long_ list) including 

eventually 

his wife who had cast off her sheltered ways and become a renowned warrior all to confront her husband and _take back her son_.


	4. Weapon

_You shouldn’t have, Obito._

On days when he was particularly self-pitying, he couldn’t help it; he resented Obito, a little, only a little bit. Just as he resented Father, only a little, only a little bit. It… was okay, wasn’t it? It didn’t, shouldn’t cheapen their memories, right? To be resented by trash. No, it wasn’t okay. What gave him the right? Father was a great man, a hero who looked after his team. And Obito, Obito had such potential but Kakashi never saw. Never allowed himself to see because, because....

Kakashi may have been acknowledged, but Obito was _loved_.

_There must be something so deeply wrong with me._

He’d had the Hatake name to restore, and then he’d had the Sharingan to live up to, and the only way through was one breath at a time, the only way forward was one mission at a time, one after another and another because he couldn’t afford to _stop;_ one death after another and another and another, and the fear rising in his comrades’ faces even as he saved them by carving out paths in blood because _he could not allow another teammate to die_ and he wasn’t panicking couldn’t be panicking because _one breath_ after another after another.

_I’m… tired. I’m just so_ tired _, Obito; Obito, why couldn’t you have just…_ kept _… running._

And then… and then Rin… and what was he worth, after all? what had he accomplished? but now there was another life, another death to live for, that he owed to _survive_ for, when he’d already failed with just the two, and he stopped looking Minato-sensei in the eyes, because the frown there that appeared only for Kakashi would no longer merely flay him, it would crush him utterly.

And then, Minato-sensei, too, was gone.

And Kakashi decided that, instead of caring deeply about anything, he would become a tool who cared about nothing. Because when a… a _friend-killer_ cares too much about something, he only ends up destroying it.


	5. Overshadowed

What if the villagers were _right_ , about what happened on Sakumo’s botched mission?

What if he failed, and failed spectacularly, because—as good of a shinobi as he was—Sakumo was only human. (It’s just he had such a long way to fall.) Perhaps he miscalculated, or couldn’t pull off that crucial move, or perhaps he simply wanted to make it home to his son.

The Third put it about that the White Fang failed in order to save his comrades, because it wouldn’t do to have such a high-profile shinobi fail out of incompetence, or cowardice, or selfishness, but Sakumo’s teammates knew what really happened, and you know how word gets around.

And Kakashi, whether he shunned his father or declared his unwavering support or asked question after endless question of ‘But what really happened?’ and “Why is everyone so mad at you?,’ only drove the knowledge of that failure deeper.

So Sakumo took the only honorable course left to to a disgraced warrior.

Deep down inside, Kakashi believed the white lie about his father. He grew up simultaneously hating him and holding him on an inviolate pedestal: Sakumo, the White Fang of Konoha, the infallible hero brought down only by the noble desire to save his comrades.

It was a tall shadow for a young child.


	6. Things You Cannot Keep

Haruno Mebiki nearly had a heart attack when she found her errant daughter, who had spent all morning in the woods behind their house and hadn’t answered her mother’s calls to come in for lunch.

“S-S-Sakura....” Her whisper trembled, despite her best efforts to project a calm, steady, non-threatening aura. Wasn’t that what one was supposed to do, in this kind of situation? Slow and easy... no sudden movements.... “Sakura, honey, move away from that... that animal _right now_.”

Her daughter turned to look at her, and Mebiki saw the glisten of tears on her face. “He's bleeding again, Mom. He’s still bleeding, and I _can’t make it stop_.”

“Honey,” Mebiki cajoled, as evenly as she could, “that thing looks dangerous. Why don’t you come over here. We’ll call Animal Control to come take care of it.”

She might as well have saved her breath. Haruno Sakura had been out-arguing her parents since the age of six, when she successfully petitioned them to let her ride the bus to school like her best friend, Ino; and, these days, her arguments were nothing if not bolstered by a healthy dose of teenaged attitude.

“Mommmm”—and Mebiki had to suppress her own eye-roll—“ _look_ at him. He can barely move. How dangerous could he be possibly _be?_ ”

At this, the wild... _creature_ on the ground huffed out a quiet breath, almost like a laugh. Mebiki gasped and would have _bolted_ if her daughter hadn’t been right there, next to those enormous bloodied paws.

But Sakura was in danger, whether she realized it or not, and she was too big for Mebiki to snatch up and run away with, and so Mebiki had to stay to protect her idiotic little genius from the—what the _hell_ was that thing? A mountain lion? A wolf? It wasn’t quite feline, and it wasn’t quite canine, and it lay twisted among the crushed flowers with its eyes slitted and its tongue lolling over foam-flecked teeth. Her daughter knelt at its side, pressing her hands to the blood-soaked rags that—

“Is that my _sheet?_ ” Mebiki demanded. “Did you tear up my _bedsheet??_ ” Her eyes took in more details. “Is that the _steak_ we’re supposed to have for dinner tonight?!”

“Yes, but he won’t _eat_ it. Oh Mom,”—new tears slipped out, and Sakura dipped her head to wipe them off on her shoulder—“I think he’s dying.”

Mebiki sighed. The creature did look pitiful, in a way. Terrifying, and pitiful.

“Sakura, I think it’s best to call Animal Control,” she said firmly as she reached into her pocket and—

—the creature _moved_ —

—(how can anything _move that fast)_ —

—and by the time she realized she was in danger it had already knocked the mobile from her hand and was standing over it on trembling legs.

“No phone call, then?” she tried to say, but all that would come out was “N-n-n....” The creature was so close she could reach out and touch its matted gray head. It assessed her briefly out of one dark, scarred eye, then dismissed her in favor of her mobile. It stank terribly—of blood, most of all; of burned hair and seared meat; of sewage, and ozone. Of something dark and deep that shut Mebiki’s brain into one repeating thought: preypreypreypreyprey....

Sakura had neither pity nor attention for Mebiki’s breakdown. “Mom, what’s he _doing?_ ”

The creature extended a metallic claw and, instead of smashing the mobile as Mebiki expected, delicately touched the recharging port. The screen went black. The creature swung its head toward Sakura.

“You... you want mine, too?” Wide-eyed, Sakura scrabbled out her brand-new, top-of-the-line, won-after-months-of-bargaining-and-begging mobile and offered it to the creature. It reached out and, again, touched claw to charging port.

Sakura pulled the mobile back and examined it, frowning. “Mom, it’s dead.”

“Sakura.” Why couldn’t the beast have been a simple wild animal? Mebiki suspected that their lives were about to get very complicated. “Sakura, I think I know what that thing is.”


	7. Kamikaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why did Sakumo kill himself?

They were winning the war. They paid, and paid dearly, for every advance, but the cause was just, so they persevered. Until, at last, they neared the heart of the empire, the source of the evil crushing the spirit of the land.

The defenders of the Outer Zone proved to be surprisingly easy to overcome, and with minimal bloodshed. All it took was some inside knowledge on precisely how to demoralize each of the Sannin—the Slug still deeply mourning her brother and lover, the Toad increasingly uncertain of the morality of his allegiance, and the Snake adrift in the desertion of his teammates.

The defender of the Wall, too, was vanquished. As terrifying as he was, Namikaze Minato was still just one man, and eventually he succumbed to the wave after wave of unified shinobi soldiers, all dedicated to bringing an end to the fiend.

Then they arrived at the Gate, and all their hopes were shot to hell. Whatever they did, wherever they turned, it seemed that the Hatakes were a step ahead—the sword of the father, the genius of the son, and the full of the forces of Konoha at the pair’s disposal.

In desperation, they turned to their last resort, which was likely to do as much harm as good. To their pride, they had plenty of volunteers, but they needed only one.

The time travel jutsu took hold, and her body crumpled to the ground, her spirit gone from the present.

Twelve years in the past, Hatake Sakumo gasped softly and stumbled to one knee.

“Otousan! Are you alright?”

A smile at the concerned boy, and the man got to his feet. “Yes, I’m fine. Just struck with a bit of a dizzy spell.”

“Maybe—maybe you shouldn’t go on this mission. Otousan... I have a bad feeling about it.”

“Now, now, son. Duty calls. A shinobi must do as he is ordered. Isn’t that right?”

A pause, then downcast eyes. “Yes, Otousan. I apologize. I wish you a successful completion and a safe return.”

“That’s my boy. We’ll celebrate when I return, hm?”

A pause, then a quiet “Hai.”

Turning to leave, Chiyo smiled to herself.

Oh, how she was going to _relish_ this.


	8. The Records Clerk, pt 1

After you fail the Chunin exam for the third time, you resigned yourself and went to work for Records and Archives. A paperwork ninja, as it were. Honestly, though, your talents had always been more intellectual than physical. (It wasn’t the _written_ portion of the exam that gave you trouble.) And anyway, your new job (as the department head had made sure to stress during your interview) was every bit as important as that of a mission ninja’s... if less prestigious.

It was also much, _much_ less dangerous, so there was that.

R&A was a department staffed mostly by retired ninjas whose bodies were too battered to continue in field service, and who were decidedly more soldierly than scholarly. There were only a few younger ninjas—washouts, you suspected, like yourself. You had a nodding acquaintance with Tomoaki-senpai, whom you knew had flunked out the year before you did.

 _Unlike_ yourself, the other genin had too much respect for the veterans to inform them of the _proper_ way to file paperwork. It wasn’t even that you didn’t respect your superiors, it was just that you respected organization and indexing more. By the end of the year, even grouchy old Rinko-san was coming to you for advice.

Despite your abilities. for your entire first year you were delegated to filing D-ranks and the occasional C-rank. You grew to know which jonin-senseis composed the mission reports, and which ones assigned more of the task to their team. The ones where the entire job was foisted onto a hapless genin were simultaneously the most frustrating and the most hilarious. You began to feel very mature.

§

Kanekira-san was complaining.

“Ugh, _this_ guy again.

“Oi, shinmai”—fourteen months in and they were still calling you newbie—“ _you’re_ good with kanji, right?”

Well. While it was true that you’d studied more characters than the cut-back set they taught at the Academy, it would be a stretch to call yourself _good_. Still, you had a reputation to uphold. “I would be honored to assist in any way, senpai!”

And that was how you graduated to B- and A-rank missions.

§

And that, also, was how you became the designated recipient of 009720’s mission reports.


	9. A New Team for Minato

He was looking forward to being a jonin-sensei; he honestly was. He’d ~~caused~~ seen too much death in the War, and he wanted to be surrounded by life. The team they assigned to him was perfect: Uchiha Obito was a scamp, but a good-hearted one. Nohara Rin was an absolute sweetheart, and Aburame Shingo was the even keel who would balance them out.

And so they were: his perfect team—until Shingo was injured on their first C-rank mission out of the village.

It was a freak accident; nobody could have foreseen the boulder, loosened by recent rainfall, which toppled off the cliffside. Obito blamed himself loudly the rest of the way home for not pushing his teammate out of the way. It wasn’t the worst injury, but it was enough that Shingo was no longer fit for active duty. Team Minato had become a 3-person cell, out of sorts and out of balance.

A week later, Hokage-sama called Minato to his office. “Of course, it’s very sad about young Aburame, very sad. However, I cannot overlook this golden opportunity to remove a certain thorn from my side,” he said, gaining in joviality as he spoke.

The thorn had a name, as it turned out: Hatake Kakashi.


	10. False Pretences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> why Sakumo made Kakashi wear a mask

The mission scroll was to the point: “Travel to the Land of Fire. Eliminate the Hatake clan. Subtlety not required.”

Good.

He liked it when the job wasn’t complicated.

🙡

The job... got complicated.

🙡

The second thing he’d done wrong was to leave the woman alive. It had seemed more trouble than it was worth to kill her: his hands were full, she’d already stabbed him once in the gut—once was _enough_ —and anyway the mission was already, thoroughly compromised (by himself, to be fair)... so _what_ if he spared two Hatakes instead of one?

He really, really should have heeded his sensei’s words of wisdom, that old blowhard. How did it go: "Let a viper live, and she shall follow implacably until one or the both of you perish"? Well... something like that, anyway.

“Ahem... sir?”

He came back to earth with a start. The lack of sleep must have been getting to him—which was why he was at this inn in the first place. The woman (not _that_ woman, a different one) behind the counter looked at him expectantly, pen in hand. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, miss. Did you say something?”

As if on cue or, more likely, as if woken by the jostling, the infant tucked in his arm yawned. It opened its great dark eyes, revealing the same wary gaze that had landed him in this current spot of trouble.

“Oh, what a cutie-pie!” the woman (not that woman, a _different_ one) cooed. “I’ve never _seen_ a baby with such pretty gray hair!” She glanced at his own undistinguished mop. “Takes after his mother, does he?”

A vein of cold shot straight down his spine and he’d almost _stabbed_ her before realizing it was just a pleasantry; _calm down, you fool, of course she didn’t, couldn’t possibly, **know**._

“Anyway,” she continued, merrily unaware of her narrow escape, “what name should I put the room under?”

He thought about the vengeful woman chasing him. What the hell. No fake name would fool her, but maybe he could goad her into finally confronting him in the open instead of sniping at him from cover.

“Hatake,” he said. The stolen infant in his arms sighed; the wound he’d received from its mother throbbed. “Hatake... Yasen.”

Oof. He’ll have to work on _that_ later.

The woman (a different woman, not _that_ woman) beamed and handed him a key. “Welcome to the Bright Start Inn, Hatake-san!”

🙡

He didn’t really think they’d have their death-match _in_ the room, under the uncomprehending stare of the baby. It was enough to put gray hairs on a man’s head.

“My name is Hatake Sakuko! I will see you in _hell!”_ she gritted out between blood and tears before she died.

🙡

He felt as if he had all the time in the world now. Where to next? Not home, that was for certain. No. No, he’d better never step foot in the Land of Wind again.

An obscure village or a powerful city? It would be easier to lie low, in a larger city, he decided as he sealed away the body. Gossip traveled fast in small villages, and now that he was a missing nin, and a parent, it was vital to fit in.

🙡

Hatake Sakuko, huh?

It had a certain ring to it.


	11. My Father Died in the War, part 1

My father died in the war.

I was quite young when the Third Spiral War began; perhaps that was why his missions were so short at first. But what began as a local trade dispute quickly embroiled all the major federations, and a soldier’s domestic situation could no longer afford to matter. My father was soon deployed to the one of the fronts. Fortunately, his departure coincided with my assignment to the SFN Academy, which took up the better part of my days. I was quite capable of taking care of myself the rest of the time.

It was a bitter, but not a lengthy, conflict. The armistice was signed a week after my graduation ceremony; the treaty, a month later. Soldier began arriving home. I waited for my father to return.

The officer who brought me his personal effects had the longest, reddest hair I have ever seen. She cried when she told me what an honor it was to have served under Colonel Sakumo Hatake. She said that he saved them all. I accepted the flight bag, the letter of condolence, and the invitation to the medal ceremony. I did not cry then.

She accepted my offer of tea, and expressed concern over my living situation. Accustomed as I was to such a reaction, I was able to assure her that I had a comfortable income and status as an emancipated minor. In material respects, it didn’t matter that my father had died a hero in the war.

And then... the time bombs were deployed.


	12. My Father Died in the War, part 2

Time bombs have since been categorized and banned as a warfare atrocity. But... once a technology exists, it never truly goes away, does it?

I don’t quite know how to convey what it was like.

I don’t... I don’t know.


	13. My Father Died in the War, part 3

This is what it was like.

When a time bomb detonates, it affects causality in the local area. What did and did not happen. The more powerful the bomb, the larger the area and the farther back its reach. The effects are random and unpredictable.

What had been won, could be lost.

Who had died, could live again. Who had lived, might have died.

As if it had always been that way.

— 

But this is true only in the area of effect.

Those of us outside the blast zone? We remember.

— 

You didn’t know who was going to be alive, or dead, from one day to the next. You just didn’t know.

— 

I waited. I waited. Still, my father didn’t come home.

— 

The time bombs were stopped. A second treaty was signed.

And that was when my father walked through the door.


	14. My Father Died in the War, part 4

This time, his mission had failed.

He was Captain Hatake now. There had been talk of a court-martial. The news reports neglected to mention his previous outcome, or that he had, still, managed to save his entire unit.

I didn’t care. I had my father back.

* * *

That’s what I thought, at first.

But he was broken, and I was not enough to put him together again.

Every day he receded further and further from me.

One day I came home and he had made it out of his bedroom. Not only that, but he was making dinner. We ate it together. It was the happiest we’d been in quite some time. I could have suspected something from the edge to his laughter, but I choose not to hear it.

The next day I came home. He had used his father’s tanto. He had done it in the bathtub.

* * *

My father didn’t die in the war.

Sometimes, I wish he had.


	16. Straw Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi is depressed, and his sensei determines to step in.
> 
> dark!Minato

Namikaze Minato was not an unobservant man. Far from it. He saw all the telltale signs that his student tried to hide from him: the tremor in the hands, the book that was slipped away whenever anyone approached, the listlessness he could not break through with offers of training or jutsu research or dinner, just the two of them. Hatake Kakashi was on a downward spiral that his teacher was helpless to prevent

That would not do. 

He thought—and Kushina agreed with him—that if Kakashi died then so would Minato’s tightening grip on the Council. It was bad enough to cause the death of both team-mates (disposable though they were) but if the last Hatake let himself be offed then Minato would become the laughingstock of Konoha. He, the Genius Fourth Hokage and Yellow Flash!

It. Would. Not. Do.

“Kakashi,” he said fondly, and ruffled the spiky gray hair, ignoring the sigh of _‘sensei,’_ “I was most impressed at your last evaluation. You’ve gotten so much stronger!”

“I’ve been training a lot,” Kakashi mumbled, digging furrows in his rice with his chopsticks. “It’s still not enough.”

Minato fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. A shinobi of Kakashi’s caliber ought to be made of stronger stuff. To let a couple inconsequential deaths collapse him so utterly.... He smiled brightly and said, “Well, I disagree! That is why I’m appointing you to a very special assignment. Kakashi, how would you like to join ANBU?”

There it was, a momentary glint of excitement in that downcast eye. “Me? In Special Ops?”

“That’s what I said! I have a mission of utmost secrecy and you are the only person I trust completely. Will you accept?”

Kakashi straightened in his seat, and then came the response Minato expected, had heard from him so many times already, crisp and confident in that high-pitched voice.

“The Hokage points, and I obey.”

Minato beamed and cuffed his student lightly on the shoulder. “Eat your dinner, kiddo. We have a lot to do tomorrow and you’re going to need all your energy.”

Another peg put neatly into place.


End file.
